Things transpire, things inspire, in bits and pieces, here and there... to capture a moment is a worthwhile venture... to preserve adventure as life goes on...

The Adventure Gene

The Bread Knife in the Warrumbungle Mountains

The six-year-old was crying.
He was sitting on the tan carpet with the cow-pattern texture to it, in
the shadowy room at the end of the hallway.
It’s not that there wasn’t a window, there was, but the mulberry tree outside
and the roof of the neighbours’ metallic carport took away most of the
sun. His bedroom was long and
rectangular; and the curtains were brown with pictures of African animals on
them. There was no mystery or suspicion
to the darkness of the room. The shadow
made it cooler than the rest of the house and he was used to it.

In front of him was a black suitcase with a cheap aluminium
band around it where its lid met the base and two aluminium latches to spring
open with a click or push down to grip the case shut. There was a key hole but no key. The six-year-old cried because he was going
away and in what had been his school bag there were not now books and
stationery but the bare essential supplies he’d thought he’d need. There was no despair in the plan. It was not because there was anything wrong
with his life; there’d been no argument or untoward incident of any
description. He was crying from
pre-missing his family, knowing that he’d not see them again, for he’d decided
it was time to move into the dry grasslands and eucalypt forests of the extinct
volcanic Warrumbungle Mountains at the zero point of the Castlereagh River,
to live with the kangaroos.

It was usual after setting up the campsite that Dad would be
busy with collecting scraps of wood to stoke a fire and boil a billy for tea,
or would be unpacking the esky, piling bread and a tub of butter on the boot of
the Kingswood in order to make sandwiches. His brothers and sisters would be helping Dad,
lying in the tent or maybe climbing the hill across the small rocky stream that
was lined with casuarina trees.

Dad never paid much attention to where his children were. He must’ve been worried as he waited for the
six-year-old to find his way back to the campsite from a nearby walk but he
never said anything. He never stifled
his children’s sense of adventure because he always wanted them to be
independent and confident and so, as the older brother had once climbed a quite
high volcanic rock without ropes, a splendid outcrop arched as a dinosaur’s
spine, the most Dad would say was, ‘You be careful.’ He liked to see his children trust themselves
and believe in their abilities; and secretly he liked it better to see his
eldest son come down again from the dinosaur rock safely.

For the children there was magic in it, especially for the youngest. On the hill across the casuarina creek the
older ones had found a small cave and there were many six-year-old questions
about it: how deep it was, how big its
entrance was and what it was like inside.
It was quite high on the hill the middle brother said and the six-year-old
alone wouldn’t be able to get there, but his brother offered to take him, later,
assuming he could find it again as the entrance was small. Dad didn’t hear news about the cave. Such things were strictly children’s matters.

But it wasn’t usually the hill that craved attention but the
nearer grasslands. Through the grasses
there was a whole network of tracks leading off from the campsite. Some of them were wide enough for a
four-wheel drive and together they made a kind of cow-pattern across the
landscape, diverging, re-emerging and joining, dipping down to meet the mostly
dry stream beds where the stinging nettles often grew. It was in that terrain, particularly in the
cooler evenings that he would wander off.
It was there he would see the kangaroos.

In truth he never went very far but when measured in six-year-old
steps distances are a good deal further and there were always animals to
see. It wasn’t only the kangaroo mobs
that’d usually be resting under a tree, only getting up slowly and hopping
lightly away as he got close, despite him having trodden as quietly as possible
so as not to alarm them. There were
emus, often in pairs and sometimes with a clutch of brown striped chicks at
their feet. The emus had eyes like his
teachers when they scanned the classroom from their desks to see who it was
that was talking out of turn. Emu eyes
seem to look over the rims of glasses even though there are none. They are intellectual birds except for when
they run and their grass skirts of feathers sway about like a car wash machine,
giving away their stupidity.

View of the Warrumbungles

The country was full of rabbits and many a burrow entrance
was inspected with the hope one would come out, and it was common to see them
as they darted away or raced back into the burrow to escape that very
visibility. More occasionally it’d be
their enemy, the fox, with his bushy reddish tail scurrying away from sight;
and there were rarer animals: wombats with their bigger burrows and stories of tiger
quolls and once, though it was up into the mountains and not by the campsite, high
in a gum tree there’d been a koala. Meanwhile
the kookaburras would be laughing at him and at the scenery.

That trail network never seemed to finish and finding out
exactly where each leg diverged, re-emerged and joined was exacting work. And the further the six-year-old went the
more he’d discover there was to discover, like the secret valley far down on
the left side where there was the greenery of a few ferns to keep things
looking cooler. Being alone never
worried him because he never was alone.
There were the roos, emus, rabbits and foxes at the least. They all seemed friendly enough, albeit shy. He knew there were snakes: red-bellies,
yellow-bellies and king browns, and he’d heard the story of how his oldest
brother had once stepped on a red-belly while on a picnic in the city and had
to be rushed to hospital in an ambulance.
But he never actually saw a snake and he suspected that they were
probably more misunderstood than vicious.
Why would a snake bite him when he meant it no harm?

It was indeed not the animals but the plants that it seemed
important to be wary of, less because of the spiky thistles and more because of
the nettles. It’d happened that he’d
been stung and it was painful. Despite
the nettles being pointed out to him by his brother so that he’d learnt to
recognise them, they grew in many places and sometimes from thinking about the
roos and their society he’d forget. But
after he’d been stung a few times he didn’t forget; and he knew, his second
brother had done it for a bee sting once, that if he could find some bracken
fern it was possible to pull it out of the ground and rub its roots on the
sting site. His second brother had made
that up of course but the six-year-old had felt slightly better once the newly
discovered remedy had been applied.

It wasn’t a plan without practicality. He’d thought it all through and knew it
wouldn’t be easy. For a start, the roos
were rather shy and it’d take time to properly make acquaintance with them; and
he’d have to learn their language and routines.
But once they trusted him he could pat them and feel the softness of
kangaroo fur. Even as they slept under
the tree in the mob he could be there with his head on one for a pillow. They wouldn’t mind. They’d get used to him in the end.

And it’d happen, after some time, that he’d know how to
communicate in emu, rabbit and fox too.
He’d know where to go to visit them at their homes and have accurate
knowledge of where each trail and small valley led. The nettles would be no problem then and if
ever there was an accidental encounter he’d know precisely where the bracken
ferns grew. He’d know too where that
cave was that his brothers had found on the hill. Perhaps there were bats that lived inside it
to become friends with.

He’d thought of water.
He’d have to learn to drink from the streams and truth is it’d happened
anyway. His oldest brother had taught
him to cup his hands and hold them under a part of the stream that had a flow
to it, where the water was wedged between two small rocks or such. The water that flowed was cleaner his brother
said. He’d thought of food. He knew it’d take time to adjust but the roos
would teach him which grasses and leaves to eat and his stomach would get used
to it after a while; but in light of the adjustment period for the new diet
he’d asked Mum to put together a few sandwiches in a brown paper sandwich bag
that was now one of the items in his suitcase.
She didn’t imagine those sandwiches were for the transition before he
ate only leaves and grass. She thought
the six-year-old was hungry and didn’t know the packet she’d put together had
been stored for later.

Most of the rest of the space in the suitcase had been
allotted to his stuffed toys. In
particular there’d be no leaving the dog called Boowy that’d been a present for
his third Christmas behind. Boowy
wouldn’t like staying in the house without him and he was sure to get along
equally well with the roos. He cared so
much about his stuffed toys, not only Boowy but Zebra, Pink Spots, Keemore and the
white horse called Blanco that he’d once taken sheets of white paper and
painted in turn each of their portraits.
The portraits were stuck to wooden boards for display, but got piled up behind
the red cupboard in the end. And
although they were all coming along he cried thinking of how he’d miss Mum and
Dad and his brothers and sister. Boowy
would miss them too. Yet when he thought
about his life ahead with the roos he felt happy and excited. It was a dilemma.

The Bread Knife

That was to be the last day with the human family. Mum and Dad were already busy packing their
own bags and loading the car for the six hour, five hundred kilometre drive from
Sydney to
Coonabarabran where his grandmother lived.
They would stay the first night there and in the morning Dad would leave
early to drive down to the service station for fuel, perhaps to make sure the
gas bottle for the stove was full, and to fill the esky with ice so that at
least for the first day there could be cold drinks, butter for the bread and liquid
milk for the tea. He’d come back with
the final provisions having been bought and the children would say goodbye to
Mum who wasn’t as keen on camping as the rest of the family. She preferred to stay in town mostly, to talk
to her mother and her own brothers and sisters who used to randomly wander into
the kitchen and sit down for a cup of tea.

The six-year-old knew not to say anything. He wouldn’t be allowed to stay living with
the kangaroos, it was certain. So he was
ready to dry his eyes and pretend everything was normal when he was called to
the Kingswood he had secretly named Tigger, the white family sedan in the
driveway out the back of his Sydney house, for the drive to Coonabarabran. He only wondered if he would leave for his
new life before or after the family hiked the Bread Knife trail that stretched
and wound its way up into the peaks of the extinct volcanoes. It would take the whole day and make
everybody tired and probably he’d ride on Dad’s shoulders in the higher parts
of the trail. Maybe he’d wait until
that’d been done.

As it turned out the six-year-old was a little too consumed with
thoughts. He’d been called several times
but in his bedroom at the end of the hall he hadn’t heard. They searched him out and of course his
bedroom was an obvious place to look.
It’d been sudden that his sister had walked into the room and seen him
sitting on the floor in front of his suitcase.
There’d been no chance to dry his eyes.

‘What are you crying for?’ she asked.

Well, the emotions were a bit overwhelming for the six-year-old,
so as much as he didn’t mean to, he just blurted out the plan. ‘I’m running away,’ he sobbed, ‘I’m going to
live with the kangaroos!’